At its simplest level, link building is about going out and getting some more links. At a more complex level, it’s about creating content and compelling reasons for other sites to link to yours.
Follow the first and your efforts may grind to a halt in frustration: follow the second and you can sit back and enjoy links appearing from many sites without even asking.
That’s the theory but what about the practical bit?
This case study from real chocolate manufacturers Rococo Chocolates will give us a chance to explain. It’s a live project and we’ll give regular updates in the months ahead.
About Rococo Chocolates
Chantal Coady set up Rococo Chocolates on London’s King’s Road just over 20 years ago. Since then its become a mecca for chocoholics everywhere and an essential stop for those of London’s gourmet set with a sweet tooth.
The shop sells its own range of real chocolate, made from cocoa beans without a drop of vegetable fat in sight. The chocolates are a real luxury and are presented with great flair and strong branding. British Airways now hand them out to first class passengers on their transatlantic flights.
Chantal Coady herself has become a respected expert in chocolate circles. She’s founder of The Chocolate Society and author of three books on “the food of the gods” - the latest of which is a stunning collection of chocolate recipes and photographs.
No shortage of great content then.
It’s the sort of project we’d all love to get our teeth stuck into and of course we jumped at the chance. But what exactly would we be asking people to link to?
It was time to get the credit card out and buy some chocolates online. What we found was not very appetising:
- While the design of the site was attractive, stylish and quirky there was little attempt to attract our attention and direct us to specific products
- Lots of the content on the site was hidden and took some effort to find
- The ecommerce was clunky in the extreme and did much to undermine confidence in the site.
These problems were reflected in the site’s performance. Online sales were low - less than 3% of annual turnover while quality inbound links were virtually non-existent.
Improving site performance
If these problems were not resolved, then our link building efforts would be sure to fail. Our first task was to work on site development.
This meant:
- Redesigning the home page with customer conversion in mind - the home page had to immediately engage a wide range of potential customers
- Introducing an effective ecommerce platform
- Creating a structure for showing content in its best light.
The second task was planning and creating the content.
Good content is a link magnet
Good content is what turns a site into a link magnet - a site that webmasters will actively want to link to. Rococo had a wealth of good content but it just wasn?t being used well.
We decided to move from a quarterly PDF newsletter to a monthly HTML version that would drive people to the site.
So what should that content be? The purpose of the website is to generate sales, not just give out free information on chocolate. So content had to result in sales.
We decided on this core content:
- Special offers - seasonal and gift items with a range of price tags.
- Chocolate recipe
- Editorial tit-bit drawn largely from material that has already been published or produced.
- Confessional - must be a fun, well-written piece.
- Information about other chocolate people - this should be optional as it may be a struggle to find and write about other people every month. Lack of such content should never take up too much time or delay publication. Best to treat it as an occasional bonus when you have something that you really want to talk about.
- Strong call to action for the website and the PDF catalogue download - this should be prominent and in every issue.
Now that the content framework was agreed we could now play our ace card - “The Forward Publishing Plan”. It’s an idea drawn from the publishing sector that helps plan content for the year ahead.
Look at the year as a whole
So here’s how to put a forward publishing plan together.
Sit down with a blank calendar and fill in events, promotions and editorial ideas for the year ahead. You need to focus on the big picture - look at the year as a whole rather than immediately get into the detail of what to publish next month.
What are the advantages?
- You can write articles well ahead of their publishing deadline - no more last minute panic trying to fill space
- Content can be matched to seasonal trends so that product sales can be maximised
- Opportunities to piggyback on external events will not be missed (e.g. trade shows)
- Synergy between other promotions will be maximised.
Forward publishing plan worksheet
You’ll find a worksheet here.
Under “Marketing Detail” enter the following information:
- List the external events in your industry. These should be major trade shows, national or international events where people’s attention is likely to be focused.
- Now list important dates in your business year - e.g. for Rococo important dates are Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Christmas and so on.
- Then list any events that you may plan - e.g. Catalogue launch, annual report, new product launch.
Now review your twelve months. Are there any gaps? It’s a good idea to have at least one initiative per month. If there are gaps, what can you find or write to fill them?
Then in each month, add further marketing detail
- Any promotions that you plan - advertising, PR, mail-shots etc.
- List your highest selling products for each month
- List a recipe or featured product.
This gives you an excellent overview of your marketing year ahead. Now sit down and plan the content. If you draw content ideas from the marketing detail, you find your conversion rates and sales will rocket.
Like a lot of “plans” this takes time to prepare and many feel they just don’t have the time to do it. But once established you’ll find that a forward publishing plan, rather than being another burden, will remove much of the stress from the publishing process and free you up to do other things.
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